Clip inside clip created by AS3

Question

There are two clips:main_mc and child_mc. The main_mc is on main-timeline of stage. The child_mc is inside main_mc, and is created by AS3 code:

var child_mc:Sprite=new Sprite;
child_mc.graphics.beginFill(0xff0000);
child_mc.graphics.drawCircle(15,20,10);
addChild(child_mc);

How to change, for example x,y , in child_mc, by AS3 created on main-timeline?

Answer 1

When you create a var inside a timeline, it becomes a property of that MovieClip, so you can access it like any other property

So, on the main timeline, you can do the following:

main_mc.child_mc.x = 100; 
main_mc.child_mc.y = 100;

If I'm misunderstanding, and you want the other direction, you use the root or parent keywords:

So, from within main_mc, you can access the main timeline like so:

MovieClip(parent)

So if you had another object on the main timeline called myClip, and you wanted to hide it with code inside of main_mc, you could do:

MovieClip(parent).myClip.visible = false;

Or, from anywhere:

MovieClip(root).myClip.visible = false;

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EDIT

It would seem from your comment, that you are attempting to access child_mc on the same frame of the main timeline where main_mc is created. The problem with this, is that the main timeline code will run before the timeline code of any of it's children. (so child_mc isn't created yet when you main timeline code runs).

If you need a way to wait until all children timeline code has run, you can do this as a workaround:

//add a listener to wait until the frame is done being constructed.
this.addEventListener(Event.FRAME_CONSTRUCTED,frameConstructed);

function frameConstructed(e:Event):void {
    //remove the listener so this function doesn't keep running on subsequent frames
    this.removeEventListener(Event.FRAME_CONSTRUCTED, frameConstructed);

    //do what you need to here
    trace(main_mc.child_mc);
}